Reading The Guardian's blaze-by-blaze coverage of the rioting last night, I came across a reference to the Croydon Guardian running a live blog.

One of the paper's reporters, Peter Truman, had written about the borough's streets being "in complete lockdown".

He described the "swarms of youths in hoods and masks" who were confronting police officers while throwing bricks, bottles and sticks.

A Croydon Advertiser colleague, Gareth Davies, was more than an eyewitness. As police sealed off the north end of Croydon, he saw youths taunting police.

Then he tweeted: "I've been punched and kicked in the face." Minutes later he tweeted again: "I ran to a police officer when trouble started and he said he couldn't help!!!"

But he shook off his own problems to continue witnessing and tweeting (see here), apparently eschewing sleep to continue this morning.

I just wish that the resulting online coverage by the Croydon Guardian and Croydon Advertiser reflected the bravery of Peter and Gareth.

I'm afraid it just wasn't as good as their first-hand accounts might suggest. I concede that I may be doing the paper an injustice because their journalists' work, if it exists, has been impossible to access.

All this morning, the paper's website was obviously struggling to cope with intense audience interest. It got 23,000 hits in 12 hours (normally getting 77,000 page views in a week). I got persistent error messages, so it proved impossible to assess the quality of its reporting efforts.

Assistant editor Matt Knowles told a Newspaper Society staffer that the paper pulled its staff out at 10.30pm "when it became clear the situation was out of control."

It was, he said, "a tremendous effort from two reporters who had never experienced such an event before" and also praised photographer Niall O'Mara.

I did eventually manage to locate some video footage, provided at some risk by members of the public. Sadly, the films lacked any voice-over commentary to tell us what it was happening.

Its sparse picture gallery was easier to scan but also lacked explanation. I'm afraid the paper doesn't appear to have risen to the occasion as well as their staff.

Then again, it was far better than any other site I came across and may well be the best available.

Over in Ealing, the local newspaper's online coverage didn't appear to be much better. The Ealing Gazette website carries 19 pictures of this morning's aftermath, and just eight rather distant images of last night's rioting.

Much as I sympathise with Russell's plight, I think his story merited a sidebar. What should be dominating the site is a much more comprehensive account of what happened.

Across the city, to Hackney, local papers appear to have performed little better. The Hackney Gazette coverage was pedestrian, but Emma Bartholomew's short report was obtained after she spent three hours at the scene around Mare Street, observing the action and speaking to onlookers.

Camden New Journal's website offerings were pretty poor. And the East London Advertiser's site gave us a 30-second video of Bethnal Green misbehaviour, but not much more.

In north London, the Willesden and Brent Times benefited from intrepid work by reporter Tom Barnes. He was on the scene when rioting broke out in Harlesden High Street.

He dared to follow gangs of looters for an hour as they attempted to break into shops, all the while phoning updates to the newsroom for the paper's website.

On the other side of the Thames, reporters from the South London Press may have been out and about in Brixton, but the website didn't reflect their efforts.

The problem could not be clearer. Local newspapers remain wedded to print. They are just not set up to report online, even if their journalists have engaged with new media tools.

So I don't blame the reporters who were risking life and limb last night by running towards trouble.

It's their bosses who are surely in the wrong. Publishers need to learn from this experience. They have failed their audiences by failing to invest enough in online resources In so doing, they are letting down the public they affect to serve.

If they don't soon grasp the potential of the digital revolution they will not be able to transform themselves from print to online news outlets.

Then again, I suspect local newspaper publishers don't really care about journalism. They are commercial operators who are interested only in profit.

The London riots have exposed the hollowness of their oft-repeated claims to be public tribunes.